


Rise

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Book Spoilers, Character Study, Community: fic_promptly, For the Book Nerds, Gen, Last Warning, Not for the TV Show, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Seriously the show isn't this far
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 09:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12650943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: On Shadow's magic.





	Rise

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Bruce Springsteen: Magic, particularly these lyrics: 
> 
> _I got shackles on my wrists  
>  Soon I'll slip 'em and be gone  
> Chain me in a box in the river  
> And I'll rise singing this song  
> Trust none of what you hear  
> And less of what you see  
> This is what will be  
> This is what will be_

Magic.

What he had, inside, sometimes he could call it magic.

It was plain, but it was his, and it was always contraband. From the coins in his palm to the feelings he got about things, to who he was. He didn't say anything. He couldn't say anything.

And so he put them away. Used them when it was necessary, but put them away, in a part of his mind no one had ever gotten to.

Do your own time. Not anybody else's.

That's what he told himself when he'd put them in their thought-box.

He believed what he could see in a tangible way, his own eyes, his own mind that wouldn't play tricks on him.

*~*~*

He chuckles a little bit, laughter of the damned, about how to deal with airport employees.

Slip the chains and don't look back. Don't look back.

Except maybe at Low-Key, sometimes, you know, a man he'd known well.

*~*~*

He feels it in his gut, how somehow, some way, this Mr. Wednesday is asking him to do his time.

He feels it and he feels something erode or rust a little and maybe he drops part of his prison-life ethos for just long enough to catch--

\--whatever this is, whatever is about to happen to him.

*~*~*

He goes willingly to the tree, and that's important to remember. He understands things now, and Odin, he knows who Odin is, and he goes to the tree (for knowledge) in service.

Not knowing if he will survive.

Not sure if he cares--he's always been bad about that, it's been bred into him and beaten into him a little--but he'll see.

*~*~*

And then there is survival. 

Survival at the very last.

And he rises.


End file.
